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Thank you for your interesting and raw thoughts :) I too agree that the internet should be as free as water. Interestingly, there are movements that attempt to

Thank you for your interesting and raw thoughts :) I too agree that the internet should be as free as water. Interestingly, there are movements that attempt to do that, but I think that government and corporation forces are quite good at driving a specific type of usage and penalizing another. So I think that will continue to be a problem. If enough people wanted to rise up, build their own fiber, run their own mesh network, and or build tools like Tor and TPB to work within the system we have, then the free and open net would win. Multiple times people have tried to do this, and they have been shut down by force, intimidation, expulsion, imprisonment, confiscation of assets, slander, blacklisting from jobs, you name it. So to advocate for a free and open net these days is pretty much a social cue that 99.999% of people will say "ehhhh I don't want to associate with that guy." That's why in 2004, TPB was king. Now in 2017, the internets is all walled gardens and censored platforms. And 99.999% of people are there by choice. It is a complete and total shame. The herd of lambs carrying each other to slaughter.

otakucode 9y ago
Each utility fought a real battle when being initially established. It's very interesting history. For awhile I was researching it pretty deeply, interested in whether my ideas were total lunacy or what and possibly considering writing a book about it. I started off with the question: What criteria was used to say 'yes, water should be a utility, natural gas should be a utility, electricity should be a utility, telephone should be a utility', etc? How did that actually come about? The question weighed for those things in the past turned out to be a fairly simple one, but which can be tricky to approach honestly and fairly for both sides: Would the benefit to society be greater than the damage caused by the elimination of competition in that space? To judge it correctly, one does have to attempt to quantify and judge how much damage would be done by eliminating the competitive aspect, because that would have to happen. Then one lines up the benefits society would garner by having it available ubiquitously and cheaply. Personally I think the call isn't even close. The Internet meets the requirement of providing more social benefit by being cheap and everywhere by miles, much moreso than some of the other public utilities even do. (First off the bat, you can get rid of the phone utility. And the TV quasi-utility.) You can actually close a gigantic number of government offices and let their employees work from home. You can tell people to 'do it online'. You can't DO that, ever, in law if universal access is not guaranteed and it remains a luxury. Small businesses would get huge with it, no longer chained to a "business class" connection that bleeds them dry and hosting companies that manipulate them, they could just run their servers themselves on their own lines. There are all sorts of other benefits to having a guaranteed-present communications network which is not a luxury but a basic service. And sure, the companies like Comcast that originally made their money from distributing media and then got into the ISP market to try to stop or destroy or control it to prevent the threat to their cash cow will go nuts about it. Their death warrant was signed the day the Internet came about. Distribution is a solved problem. Sure 50 years ago if I made a video and wanted to show it to 10,000 people I'd HAVE to sign up with a distributor and beg and scrape and HOPE they only skimmed 99% of the value out of that transaction. Distribution was flat-out the single most valuable economic activity and dominated the entire global economy from the advent of factories (it made factories possible) up until the Internet came along (computers helped). Now distribution is something a clever 12 year old can do in their spare time for fun. And most importantly, the 12 year old will do it faster, better, and at a radically lower cost compared to the established gigantic players who feel entitled to still be kings. They love capitalism and the free market until they're stuck holding a huge order of buggy whips and watching everyone driving around in automobiles. Suddenly they wish their lobbyists could get the government to require cars to have a buggy whip installed before they'd start up.
- quuquuquu 9y ago
  I agree once more with everything you have said! Sadly I am still worried about the "details of implementation", because they will need to occur within our lifetime, and are influenced by very very rich people who hold all the keys. Do you think ISPs will become public utilities in the next 20 years? 40? If so, how? It seems to me that corporations, their politicians, and their supporters have a pretty tight grip on everything. I am not hopeful that any massive or meaningful changes will occur. The Washington Consensus seems to ensure corporate dominance will continue, to our detriment.

otakucode 9y ago

Each utility fought a real battle when being initially established. It's very interesting history. For awhile I was researching it pretty deeply, interested in whether my ideas were total lunacy or what and possibly considering writing a book about it. I started off with the question: What criteria was used to say 'yes, water should be a utility, natural gas should be a utility, electricity should be a utility, telephone should be a utility', etc? How did that actually come about? The question weighed for those things in the past turned out to be a fairly simple one, but which can be tricky to approach honestly and fairly for both sides: Would the benefit to society be greater than the damage caused by the elimination of competition in that space? To judge it correctly, one does have to attempt to quantify and judge how much damage would be done by eliminating the competitive aspect, because that would have to happen. Then one lines up the benefits society would garner by having it available ubiquitously and cheaply. Personally I think the call isn't even close. The Internet meets the requirement of providing more social benefit by being cheap and everywhere by miles, much moreso than some of the other public utilities even do. (First off the bat, you can get rid of the phone utility. And the TV quasi-utility.) You can actually close a gigantic number of government offices and let their employees work from home. You can tell people to 'do it online'. You can't DO that, ever, in law if universal access is not guaranteed and it remains a luxury. Small businesses would get huge with it, no longer chained to a "business class" connection that bleeds them dry and hosting companies that manipulate them, they could just run their servers themselves on their own lines. There are all sorts of other benefits to having a guaranteed-present communications network which is not a luxury but a basic service. And sure, the companies like Comcast that originally made their money from distributing media and then got into the ISP market to try to stop or destroy or control it to prevent the threat to their cash cow will go nuts about it. Their death warrant was signed the day the Internet came about. Distribution is a solved problem. Sure 50 years ago if I made a video and wanted to show it to 10,000 people I'd HAVE to sign up with a distributor and beg and scrape and HOPE they only skimmed 99% of the value out of that transaction. Distribution was flat-out the single most valuable economic activity and dominated the entire global economy from the advent of factories (it made factories possible) up until the Internet came along (computers helped). Now distribution is something a clever 12 year old can do in their spare time for fun. And most importantly, the 12 year old will do it faster, better, and at a radically lower cost compared to the established gigantic players who feel entitled to still be kings. They love capitalism and the free market until they're stuck holding a huge order of buggy whips and watching everyone driving around in automobiles. Suddenly they wish their lobbyists could get the government to require cars to have a buggy whip installed before they'd start up.

quuquuquu 9y ago
I agree once more with everything you have said! Sadly I am still worried about the "details of implementation", because they will need to occur within our lifetime, and are influenced by very very rich people who hold all the keys. Do you think ISPs will become public utilities in the next 20 years? 40? If so, how? It seems to me that corporations, their politicians, and their supporters have a pretty tight grip on everything. I am not hopeful that any massive or meaningful changes will occur. The Washington Consensus seems to ensure corporate dominance will continue, to our detriment.